I’ve decided to try and keep this post a little bit calmer (it’s still early over here, so I haven’t drunk too much yet, lol).

The first obvious thing to think about is how we lined up from the off.
I think Bree being injured caused a problem, in that his loss would have left a proper 3-5-2 somewhat unbalanced.
Well, that’s my thinking anyway, as it’s the only reason I can think of us starting with five defenders.
Regardless, I called for a threatening, aggressive line-up and it’s quite simply not what we got.
Why we pay so much respect to the likes of Ipswich is beyond me and I’ve spoken before about going down trying as opposed to being canny and still losing.
But then, if you look at the stats, I believe Ipswich only had one shot on target and scored.
So maybe Steve Bruce is totally correct in not being able to trust the defence?

In Bruce’s defence, he did eventually realise that we needed to be more ambitious and he put Adomah and Green on, yet still retained the same setup.
While you can’t say that’s negative, maybe it would have been a better setup from the off?

But then, the commentator’s comments intrigued me.
We were comfortable in the first half and should have gone in a goal or two to the good.
Yet we began the second half poorly. Again.
What the hell gets said to the players at half time? I’d love to know, because it clearly isn’t working.
And what are the opposition managers saying?
I suspect it’s along the lines of “don’t worry lads, you’ve got these; they’re going to bottle it”. And it would seem correct.

Tony Morley said he can’t work it out and asked if it’s the pressure from the fans, the club or whatever. I suspect it’s all of them myself.
Either way, we came out rubbish, not being able to hold the ball or pass. The usual.
And when we did start to play, we couldn’t get telling balls into the box.

Ultimately, it’s only the result that matters and we didn’t get it.
To lose our unbeaten home record, especially with what Morley called a “whimper” to Ipswich is frankly not good enough.
And when you consider we haven’t won in eight games, it’s beginning to get very worrying.
Because the question is if you can’t get a result at home to Ipswich, who are you going to get one against?

Morley said he feels sorry for Bruce and I partly agree with it.
But he’s done himself no favours whatsoever lately and it would be totally understandable if the fans turn on him, which they’re going too.

Me, I side with Morley, in that the side needs to gel.
But I know many of you won’t see it like that and comments on Villa threads everywhere are going to be interesting this weekend.
I just don’t see how changing the manager again is going to achieve anything.

it matters not how you win a game of football. fans can become hypocrites. take villa under mon we won games but we wasnt happy. under berk we won enough games to survive, under lots of cuts. but was we happy then??now we cant win or score or entertain. are we happy I HOPE WE arent

ipswich played their game, style, tactics and formation they have played all season. they have that advantage on villa. this is advantage all the championship clubs have on us. until our players get to know each other and each other strengths, form will be erratic, its like we are stuck in the starting blocks. when we score the first goal, that might be the start, it should be, but its a long road back. if we had signed these players preseason we would have had the time to work on systems, these players recruited might have gone elsewhere.

so patience is needed by fans and our expectations need to be lower, surviving and scoring should be the immediate ambitions, if we can manage this we should be ready for next season in a far healthier position.

But the players we signed pre season were still good enough to get top 6 imo. If you look at all the games we played under RDM we played decent football at times but a lot of our draws and losses came from defensive errors esp Gollini. How do you account for that in pre season. We seem to get one error prone player after another especially goalkeeper and centre halves.

Oohah don’t like to use the ‘bad luck’ excuse but there’s no doubt we seem to have suffered almost 100% conversion of mistakes into goals. Now everyone and every team make mistakes but don’t expect them to be routinely punished with a goal in the Championship. At the other end we seem to come across goals with bigger and wider posts and bars, GK’s playing blinders and mistakes never quite falling to our forwards. You explain it because I can’t but didn’t someone once say ‘rather have a lucky manager than a clever one’.

At times it does feel like the club is cursed – stupid comment really 🙂

All this “experience and patience” BS is spouted by the media with whom Bruce is pals with. It was the same with Redknapp or even Sherwood. Just look at the disgraceful comments by Merson or the other fools on Sky about Marco Silva or Paul Clement… mocking them before they’d managed a game yet they are both doing terrific jobs.

If the club wants to be progressive, it needs a progressive manager. Bruce is a dinosaur but my fear is that Wyness and the board are too and therefore they will not make the change the club needs.

There is always a balance needed between the ambitous and talented young and the older more experienced individuals. That is true in a football team as it is in management or even in the general workforce.

You might want to decry the experience of SB, Wyness and others – you better include the ageing Brian Little in your list of dinosaurs – but to imply that Dr. T falks into the same category appears to me to be arguing against yourself.

We have a young progressive and successful owner who I’m sure will not be frightened to make difficult decisions in the future as he gains more experience of running our club – or perhaps his lack of experience is really at the heart of the problem?

Good point H60, maybe DrT is pulling all the strings and his innexperience is causing some problems…… But he hasnt been here for the last 6 years….. We need that gypsy women who removed the curse from the stye all those years ago !

stick with the manager and the team in 12 months we will be much better and stronger.
We have had a total overhaul in the summer and another in January and expect straight away to be competing with settled teams.
These things take time as disappointing and frustrating as it is.
I for one am starting to get embarrassed at how many mangers we have had recently.
Who next Rowett, Warburton another squad overhaul and in 10 games start moaning about the manager again.
Be patient !!!!

My worry is if we find ourselves in a relegation scrap, this lot of merceneries havnt got the fight for it… We’ve spent all season looking up the table and not looking down, and as we cant beat teams below us, this means only one thing !!